


Royai Week 2020 - Prompt Three: Old Wounds

by royza_hawkstang



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, royaiweek20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24651235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royza_hawkstang/pseuds/royza_hawkstang
Relationships: RoyAi
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Royai Week 2020 - Prompt Three: Old Wounds

## Old Wounds

Weapons could be used to wound. Any first-grader that got a lecture from their mother about scissors and sharp knives knew that. But he had hit upon one that, although it had wounded him time and again, it also healed him. Riza had been the cause or reason for several major marks inflicted on him – physical and psychological – and yet Roy knew he’d never be able to let go of her. On the surface, sure. Physically, yes. But never in the deepest recesses of his heart.

Because any wound she caused or he incurred on her behalf, he had only to look at her for it to fade away.

* * *

Logically speaking, he shouldn’t be scared of her.

She was a lone thirteen-year-old girl that kept to herself, did her homework, kept a level head on her shoulders, and somehow still managed to keep the entire house (besides the library) clean and have a hot meal ready at the end of the day. There was absolutely nothing about her that should make him break out in the cold sweat that every hormonal teenage boy dreaded… but that was the exact effect she had on him. 

If there was anyone with the last name ‘Hawkeye’ that he should be scared of, it was her father. Her terse, intimidating, single-minded father… but somehow, he garnered much less fear in Roy’s book.

He sat on the overstuffed couch in the study, both feet on the floor, both hands on the book in his lap… and tried to recall what he was supposed to be reading. Every muscle was tense, his jaw clenched, he was afraid to move… and all she was doing was sitting on the opposite couch, facing him, scribbling on a notepad and occasionally checking some bit of information in the book beside her. Her legs were tucked up underneath her, the toes of her bare feet wiggling idly as she worked, light concentration turning those already serious brown eyes somber. That was as much as he could see without lifting his head and making it obvious he was watching her.

Finally, enough of the tension eased from his chest to allow him to speak. “What —“ Having been quiet for so long, his voice gave one of its embarrassing mid-puberty squeaks, and he coughed to unsuccessfully cover it. Riza looked up, and he almost lost his nerve, then swallowed hard and tried again. “What are you working on?”

“Oh.” She held up the book. “Book report. Although it’s less of a report and more of a ‘I hope I’m getting this right,’ because the prose is heavy and kind of hard to understand.”

Roy tried a smile. “Yeah. I recognize the title. That’s a rough one.”

His heart started racing as she returned the smile – in a very pretty fashion for someone so terrifying, he had to admit – before she shifted to sit with her back braced on the armrest, her knees drawn up to create a kind of easel for her notepad. “I’ll still take this over my math homework any day.”

“You have trouble with that, too?” Curiosity was drawing him in, now. At her confirming nod, he set his book aside. “Maybe I can help. I mean… I’m a couple years older than you; chances are I’ve had to deal with it already.”

The look she gave him was sidelong, evaluating the offer. After a moment, she said, “Well… I understood basic trigonometry well enough. Sine, cosine, all that. But we just started talking last week about “functions” and I’m already lost.” Her lips twitched in a suppressed smile. “You might say my math skills have become… non-functional.”

He knew he was staring at her. Open-mouthed, no less. He hadn’t been expecting a joke like that, not from her. She was so quiet, so reserved…. This had to be once-in-a-blue-moon sort of thing for her. _Laugh_ , he thought hazily. _Laugh before she gets insulted and puts you out of your misery for good._

He settled for a smothered snort, shaking his head with a grin. “I might be able to help a little bit. That stuff was clear as mud to me, as well.” He looked up, still smiling. “What do you say – shall we make it a study date?”

It was exactly the wrong phrasing to use. He saw her walls go up, saw her dart back into her shell… a dozen metaphors came to mind, all leading to the same conclusion. Roy had firmly overstepped his bounds, had trod on this already tenuous new ground, and stepped directly on the new flower of a possible friendship.

_You don’t use the word ‘date’ that fast around a kid like her, idiot,_ he scolded himself. _If she didn’t already barely tolerate you, now she’s just going to think you’re a creep. How are you going to fix —_

“I… don’t think a date is necessary.” His train of thought cut off abruptly as she dropped her feet to the floor, gathered her book and notepad, and rose. “I should go,” she added quietly. There was no other emotion in her voice, no obvious discomfort, no open dislike… and somehow that was worse. More condemning.

Roy could think of nothing to say as she headed for the door. His mind was reeling with a combination of embarrassment, rejection, and returning fear, all three emotions leaving painful little scratch marks on his heart. Just as her hand reached for the doorknob, he managed a quiet, “I’m sorry.”

Riza froze instantly, then turned to look at him. “Pardon?”

Swallowing the hurt, he sat straight and forced himself to look her in the eye. “I… made that really awkward, and put you in an uncomfortable position,” he said, knowing he sounded overly formal but not having any idea what other words to use. “I’m sorry about that.”

She watched him for several agonizing heartbeats, her expression unreadable, then nodded. “Apology accepted.” She tilted her head, that small smile coming back. “And, hey…. I said no to the date part, not to some help studying. If you’re still willing.”

* * *

Sometimes, he wished he had paid more attention to constellations and important stars in school. Alchemy, chemistry, physics… that had all come first in his mind, not little points of light in the night sky that would still be there when he decided to take the time to learn about them.

Of course, in Central, seeing stars at night was a rarity. The streetlights dimmed them, if not causing them to vanish altogether. At the Academy, he’d been so tired every night when he finally crawled into the bunk that he couldn’t stay awake to stargaze even if he’d wanted to.

But here, in the desert landscape of Ishval, the sky came alive at night.

Lying on his back, dark eyes wide, he stared the sparkling skyscape overhead, trying to memorize all the stories Riza would spin for him, trying to memorize name after name… and failing horribly. He alternated between watching the sky and watching the graceful movements of her fingers as they traced shapes on the starry backdrop.

“This one is Eagle’s Flight,” she said, pointing to a cluster of stars in the shape of a capital T. “The tip of one wing, to its head, to the other wing, with the tail back here. And this is the first one I learned about: Mother Bear.” She traced an uneven rectangle between four stars. “The body…” Her finger trailed along several bright dots. “…a tail…” In front of the rectangle, she added a triangle that culminated in a single forward-facing point. “…and her head.”

He couldn’t help himself. “Bears don’t have tails that long.”

“Seen many bears, have you?” she shot back easily.

Rolling his eyes, he gave up, pointing instead to another section of stars. “What about that one? Is that anything?”

Riza thought a moment, then nodded. “The Seated Queen. She said that she and her daughter were more beautiful than any sea nymph, and that made the god of the sea so angry that he sent a sea monster to destroy the kingdom. The only way he would stop was if the queen and her husband sacrificed their daughter to the monster.”

He turned his head so that he could see her, lying on her back in the sand like he was, her eyes on the stars. “…You’re kidding. You’re making that up.” She shook her head. “What kind of crazy fairy tales were you reading as a kid?!”

“It’s not a fairy tale, it’s a legend,” she corrected him, though teasingly. “Anyway, the daughter was saved before she could be eaten, by a hero – that’s his constellation over there – and the queen and her husband – over there – were placed next to each other in the stars.”

“Hey, that’s a good deal,” he said dryly. “Agree to sacrifice your daughter and be immortalized forever as a bunch of balls of hot, burning gas.”

She laughed quietly, and the two of them sank into companionable silence. Roy breathed deep of the cooling air, wondering how a moment like this – a moment of personal peace and relaxation – could be achieved in the middle of a warzone. He had almost no right to be lying here, calm, when tomorrow he could be sent back out with the first wave of a new attack.

He turned his head slightly, just enough so that he could see her, and watched her eyes still roaming the sky. They flitted from one group of stars to the next, trailed the lines that, of the two of them, only she could see. He could see a shadow of that young girl he’d known, had helped to figure out math homework in the dusty, close confines of her father’s personal library.

Back then, she’d had bruised and scratched-up legs from being outside every moment she could. The soles of her feet were blackened and calloused, requiring a scrub in the bathtub every night, from going barefoot in the summer heat. She had climbed trees with the best of them, swum in the small stream two hundred metres behind her house, and sat perfectly still to let a butterfly alight on the palm of her hand while he watched breathlessly.

And now she was here, with him. She wore the same uniform he did. She had the same tired, dark circles under her eyes that he did. Her hands held the same bloodstains as his… and it was all his fault. She had followed him to this place, and in doing so, he had condemned her, body and soul.

He looked away quickly; too quickly. She noticed.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, casually, knowing that the answer wasn’t going to satisfy her. “Just thinking.”

A moment of silence, then, “Not thinking.” Her voice was soft, knowing and sympathetic… but unyielding. “Brooding.”

“Hm.”

Her elbow nudged his ribs. Not painfully, but enough to signal that a second nudge might not be as gentle. “Say it aloud,” she advised. “It’s not going to do you any good if it just sits and festers in your mind.”

Roy held his tongue, trying to wait her out. If he didn’t admit what he had been thinking, she couldn’t hate him for it. She couldn’t hate him for drawing her into this life, for using her father’s research the way he was. She couldn’t hate… him.

But he should have known better than to try to out-wait a sniper. Finally, after fifteen minutes of near-deafening silence, with her head turned so that her eyes were staring holes into his cheek, he let out a a deep sigh. “All right, all right, you win already. I was just… I was thinking that… I’m sorry. Sorry that I drew you into this life.”

Riza said nothing, and after several awkward seconds, he sat up, staring out at the nighttime sands. “I’m sorry that you felt you had to follow me into the military, that it got you sent here, that you’re forced into doing… what it is we do.” More long seconds of silence followed, twisting the knife of guilt a little further into his heart. “I’m so sorry, Riza. For all of it.”

“Does that include thinking so little of me that you believe I’m incapable of my own decisions?”

His head whipped around to find her still lying flat on her back in the sand, her legs crossed at the ankles, her fingers laced together and resting at the bottom of her ribcage, her eyes calm and on the stars once again. “…What?”

“What _what_?” she countered. “Do you honestly think that I followed you into the military because of some schoolgirl crush? Or maybe you think that you spoke so eloquently about rebuilding the country and using alchemy to help people that I just threw away whatever dreams I had of a civilian life and dashed headlong for the nearest recruitment centre?” She snorted quietly. “Give me some credit, please.”

Roy wasn’t sure what to say, either in general or that wouldn’t make her angrier than she clearly already was, so he kept his mouth shut. Riza continued. “You may have sparked the idea, pardon the pun, of joining the military, but you’re far from the reason I enlisted. I made that decision on my own, based on my own interests. Yes, that led to me being stationed out here, yes, that has led to my having to do things I regret. But in all of it – enlistment, training, being assigned to Ishval – the only point where my hand was forced is in, as you said, doing what we do.”

She got to her feet, brushing herself off. “I gave you my father’s secrets, Roy. I didn’t give you control over my actions or my life. You want to be a leader? You’d do well to remember that.”

Turning, she started back toward the nearby glow of the tents and campfires, leaving him feeling as though one of Kimblee’s explosions had gone off directly underneath him. It sank in, slowly, like ice-cold fingers, that he had probably just ruined one of two genuine friendships he had in this hellhole, and when Hughes heard about this, he could kiss the second one goodbye as well.

_You idiot_ , his mind growled at him. _Get off your ass and get after her. Don’t lose her after all you’ve been through._

Scrambling to his feet, he took off, sending sand flying. “Hawkeye, wait up!”

To his relief, she paused, half-turning to watch him approach. Her expression gave nothing away, neither anger or willingness to forgive. Roy skidded slightly as he came to a halt, swallowing hard in nervousness. “I – That was… unfair of me. I assumed a lot of things out of… of guilt, I guess, at finding you here, in a place like this. I feel….”

He struggled with the words for the moment, but she waited, hands folded, watching. “I feel… responsible for you, somehow. Your dad asked me to look after you, and up until now, I’ve done a pretty piss-poor job of that.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair, trying to figure out just how the hell expressing oneself was supposed to work. “You were right, the decisions that brought you here are yours. You’re responsible for your own life. I guess… I just feel guilty that I haven’t done more, and can’t do much, to make sure it’s a happy one.”

When it was clear his words had run out, she spoke. “Would you like to know something that _does_ make me happy?”

He grinned lopsidedly, and only half-heartedly. “Will it make me feel less awful?”

“Maybe.” Her smile was small, knowing. “Something that makes me happy… is seeing someone receive information, and accepting that information and using it to change their outlook. To grow themselves as a person.” She tilted her head to one side, regarding him closely. “And I believe I just saw that.”

He felt it go, felt that cold ice-knife of guilt slide out of the rip it had torn into him, felt the warm, affirming words close up the wound with no blood spilled, and leave him just a little stronger.

“I’ll try to live up to that.” He glanced upward. “Maybe it’s not worth being immortalized in the stars, but it ought to count for something.”

Her fingers brushed, feather-light, against his and then withdrew. “It already counts for a lot.”

* * *

He remembered thinking “oh, good, that’s the last of it” before catching a faint whiff of charred skin, and having to turn away to be violently sick. The tent was too confined, too dark, too oppressively hot all at once, and yet his pulse roared in his ears, spots of light swam in his vision, and a deep chill ran through him.

He spat the foul taste of bile from his mouth, glancing back over her shoulder.

Riza was on her knees, crouched low, her forehead pressed to the sandy ground that served as a floor. He could hear her breathing, the sound coming in sharp hisses around the leather belt clamped between her teeth. Her right hand, the only one he could readily see, slowly clenched and unclenched, compressing and flattening the same palmful of grit over and over.

His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “Hawkeye?”

Her hand froze, then reached with agonizing slowness to the belt and pulled it from her mouth. “Bottom of my kit,” she gritted. “Small white bottle. Get it.”

Roy’s stomach rolled as he moved to do as she said, but he swallowed hard and kept whatever was left in his stomach down. Wriggling a hand through the various articles in her pack, down to the bottom, he fished about until he found something that felt like a bottle. It rattled as he brought it out.

“Pain pills?” he asked, turning toward her.

“For… you know.” She had shifted so that she was sitting, though she was still bent forward. Her cheeks, ashen until now, coloured slightly. “For… ‘women’s troubles?’”

He looked at the label again, read the active ingredient in the medication, and the dosage, his brain feeling fuzzy and sluggish. “…Damn, it hurts bad enough for extra-strength?”

She held out her hand, crooking her fingers impatiently. “Dealing with that means I can deal with this,” she said, just a little sharply. “Two should help.”

“Right, sorry.” He noticed, belatedly, that his fingers were shaking as he twisted the cap off the bottle. The little white tablets inside rattled even harder as he eased a pair of them from the container and passed them to her, watching in dull surprise as she dry-swallowed them, one by one.

He had a sneaking suspicion he was in shock. The one rational part of his brain could realize that. The confusion, the cold sweat, the tent seeming to tilt one way then another around him… all signs pointed to it. He should tell Riza, tell her so that when he most likely passed out, she would know why. It seemed only polite.

She was sitting calm and collected, her eyes closed, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. Maybe he should try that. Mimic her, and in doing so, find some kind of emotional anchor in this storm of emotion.

It hit him again. What had he _done_? To her, to one of the single most important people in his life, to the quiet girl and stoic woman whom – he had to admit – he had somehow fallen head over heels for? He had marked her. He had _marred_ her. She had been perfect and whole and now —

He watched as she gathered the tan overcoat of her uniform to her chest, apparently realized rather belatedly that she was sitting in the dark without any sort of covering up top. She hugged the fabric, looking his direction… and stopped. “…What?”

“…Can you forgive me for this?”

Brown eyes, dulled slightly by the pain, stared at him for a long moment. Then, quietly, “Roy, I asked you for this. I asked you to destroy it.”

“I didn’t. Destroy it, I mean. Not all of it.” Her eyes flashed with hot anger in the darkness and he scrambled to explain himself. “Riza, I couldn’t! I don’t care how strong you are, that much would…. Even if I held back the most I could, it’d kill you. You can’t go to the medics with this, you know you can’t. They’ll ask too many questions. If I burned that tattoo in its entirety, you’d go into shock and you’d die. Hell, _I’m_ in shock and all I did was snap my fingers!”

Her eyes still smoldered, unrelenting. “So then how —“

“The parts I burnt are absolutely vital to understanding everything else. They tie it all together,” he explained. “It’s… it was surgical, I guess. Precision shots. Without those three spots, the rest is next to useless.”

She was quiet for several beats, then murmured, “Precision shots…. Like a sniper.” The heat was gone from her eyes, the glare fading. “I’m…. I can still be my own person.”

“You always have been.” The smile he offered was nowhere near strong enough to be genuine, but it was a valiant try. “You’re the smartest, strongest, most independent, self-reliant, quick-witted person I know. I’d keep going with adjectives, because I know there’s at least three dozen more, but I can’t think of them.” He closed his eyes, willing the tent to stop spinning, or at least to spin a little less violently. “I want that for you, I want you to have that freedom to be yourself because if any of us deserves to come out of this place with even half a chance, it’s you. It’s you and Hughes.”

“You’re leaving somebody out,” she prodded gently.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you realize how badly this place has hit home for me. I said I wanted to help people, but… I think I’ve got an entire nation – and any others we’re fighting with – to help. I’m not dragging you two into that. Hughes has that girlfriend of his to go home to, you’ve got the rest of your life in front of you.”

“You’re right on that, but wrong on another thing.”

His eyes opened just in time for her to press a soft kiss to his cheek, her hand folding around his. “I’m not leaving here without you.” The words were soft, but anchored stolidly in conviction. “You’ve got big dreams for this country… and thanks to you, so do I. And you’re going to need help to make those happen.”

* * *

His eyes snapped open to darkness, but it wasn’t the darkness of lying on the sand under an Ishvalan sky. Instead, only the whitewashed ceiling stared back at him. The sheets were tangled around his legs, some faint draft turning the sheen of a light sweat icy against his bare chest. Even that did nothing to dispel the summer warmth permeating the apartment.

Nights like this often brought the past back to him in dreams. Sometimes pleasant, more often not. But more and more frequently in the not-too-distant past, it had become much easier to handle.

The reason why was sprawled next to him, her hair lying half on her pillow and half on his, one hand beneath the pillow and the other curled to her chest, her dog draped over one extended leg, and her mouth open just enough for the faintest of snores to issue forth.

Turning onto his side, Roy slid an arm around Riza’s waist, tugging her close against him. If she only knew that she became as un-Riza-like as physically possible while she slept…. He suspected she would find that potentially embarrassing, but he loved it. Hell, he loved _her_.

And, in the end, that was the miracle balm for any wound, no matter how far in the past or near the present it was.


End file.
